Random thoughts: Yaoi

I want to like yaoi. I really do.

Unfortunately, it’s one of those concepts that sounds good on paper but in practice leads to lots of disappointment.

So what is it? It’s an acronym for Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi, or translated to English: No climax, no point, no meaning. It’s M/M erotica in manga (Japanese comic) form, with focus on the sex over the story.

I really tried to give yaoi a fair shake, and there are a few stories I really like (Black Sun is one, Crimson Spell is another). But most of them fit the definition a little too well-Most of yaoi is pure porn. That’s all. The stories are as flimsy as the well-hung UPS boy visiting the lonely housewife, and many yaoi “novels” are collections of short stories with very little in the way of actual story.

Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. Porn is fine. But yaoi has a few characteristic tropes that make me put most of it down in disgust.

First, there is the “gay for you” trope. This is when a character isn’t gay, but ends up being attracted to and having sex with a gay guy, while still self identifying as straight. Some people like the thrill of seeing straight guys act gay, but to me its just offputting, especially when the gay lifestyle is portrayed as weird or “taboo,” or the straight character insults the gay one. This happens often, and it has made me put more than one manga straight into the garbage pail. 

Another trope, and an even more common one, is the strict delineation of the uke and the seme, or the bottom and top, respectively. The uke is usually an overly effeminate, uncertain boy/man, while the seme is a hypermasculine, typically insensitive older male. These roles never change. This rigidity makes stories boring and repetitive, and after a while all the ukes and semes start to look the same.

Related to this, most of yaoi takes place in high school, or at least one of the characters is in high school. Fine for younger readers, but that skews way too young for me. I want to see something a little more interesting than stories of boys in high school. 

And another point related to this: Rape and dubious consent of the uke is very common. Not something I enjoy.

And lastly, yaoi almost never actually makes any attempt to portray what being gay is actually like, even if the story is actually set in a high school. I would be intrigued to read about what a gay Japanese high school boy experiences, and the kind of prejudices or support he faces, but those issues are never discussed. It’s nothing but pure fantasy.

Yaoi is great, for those who like it. Perhaps I expect too much of it. But it typically (with few exceptions) just disappoints me.

Slash, on the other hand, I enjoy a lot. Fanfic writers never disappoint. J